The Onliest Jack Carlin on Fable Records

Greetings!

I have again endeavored to re-up another months worth of earlier-posted song poems, in this case the three records I shared in January of 2015. This is a slow process, but at least it's started. Starting today, you can again enjoy a truly wonderfully ridiculous record by Phil Celia on Tin Pan Alley, a very rare Star-Crest single, featuring two songs that total 189 seconds between them, and the lovely and talented Norm Burns, who is not letting mom off the hook!

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And now..... 

Posting songs from the Fable label is sort of a crap-shoot. While there are a handful which are almost certainly song-poems, and plenty more which seem very likely to have been attempts at hits, that leaves a bunch which are just goofy enough or off-kilter in some way to make them seem likely to be song-poems, or at best vanity records, with Fable doing the honors of providing the performers for someome's completed lyrics and music.

I actually suspect the latter of today's record, but I'm posting it anyway, because a.) it deserves to be heard and b.) I've received requests over the years to continue sharing Fable releases, of which I have many, and which are starting to go for higher and higher prices at auction.

Both sides of this record were written by the wonderfully named Calasanz Joseph Jones & Thelma Hester Jones - I got this information from the Catalog of Copyright Entries, where the Jones' are listed as composers of a few songs. Again, my guess is that they paid Fable to record their songs - perhaps they even picked the singer, Jack Carlin, who does not appear on any other cataloged Fable release. Fable even went so far as to send this record to Billboard in late 1956, where it was dutifully reviewed (every record Billboard received got a mention, in those days), and given very poor prospects for any success.

On both sides, Carlin is backed by label honcho Sandy Stanton and the Fabel Label All Stars, billed just like that: "Fabel". I will have to look to see if any other Fable release has that billing.

Oh, and the songs? Well, for one thing, they may both qualify as the two longest titles I've ever shared on this site, each of them having a lengthy main title and a significant subtitle. And the subject of both songs is, generally speaking, laziness.

First up is "I Got One Foot in the Grave (And the Other Won't Behave)". If nothing else, the prominent bum guitar note a the 1 1/2 second mark gives me the impression that making this as professional and hit-bound a record as possible was not on the agenda that day. But the whole thing is clever and funny, and quite enjoyable, well never quite sounding completely on the level.

Download: Jack Carlin, Music by Sandy Stanton and the Fabel Label All Stars - I Got One Foot in the Grave (And the Other Won't Behave)
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Continuing the theme, in a minor key this time, the flip side is titled "The Onliest Thing I Won't Do (Is Work Work Work). This side sounds considerably more song-poem-ish to me, with its thudding beat and a guitarist who occasionally sounds like he's not following the same chord changes as the rest of the band. Jack Carlin also sounds far less like a professional singer on this track.I find this side to be a genuinely odd combination of sounds and arrangement choices.

Download: Jack Carlin, Music by Sandy Stanton and the Fabel Label All Stars - The Onliest Thing I Won't Do (Is Work Work Work)
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